This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Art in his blood and steel in his bones

Matthew Teitelbaum's relationship with the Art Gallery of Ontario started long before he became its director. Back in the 1980s, his father, artist Mashel Teitelbaum, became a familiar figure picketing outside the AGO on Dundas St.

Matthew Teitelbaum's relationship with the Art Gallery of Ontario started long before he became its director. Back in the 1980s, his father, artist Mashel Teitelbaum, became a familiar figure picketing outside the AGO on Dundas St.

He was frustrated by its elitist stance and a perceived failure to support contemporary Canadian artists – artists such as Mashel Teitelbaum himself.

Perhaps that's what made the recent reopening of the Frank Gehry-designed AGO such a poignant moment for those who knew Mashel – more space than ever is now devoted to modern art.

And for many it's no surprise the younger Teitelbaum, who has run the gallery since 1998, has quietly established himself as one of the most successful directors in the 109-year-old institution's history.

Of all the projects in Toronto's so-called Cultural Renaissance – that includes the Royal Ontario Museum, the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, the National Ballet School, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts and the Royal Conservatory of Music – Gehry's AGO, which reopened last November, is far and away the most popular of the bunch.

Article Continued Below

As always, there were complaints about cost ($276 million) and timing (more than five years), but in the end the new building has made believers of even the most vocal critics.

Joey Tanenbaum, the Toronto philanthropist renowned for his enthusiasm and generosity, made it clear several years ago that he was deeply unhappy about the fate of the Tanenbaum Sculpture Atrium, which as the name implies, was sponsored by him and his wife, Toby. Though widely acknowledged to be one the finest spaces in the old AGO, it came out of remake a shadow of its former self.

"I'm still unhappy about that," the affable Tanenbaum admits over the phone from Florida. "They killed a beautiful space. But I take my hat off to Matthew. He did something I didn't think would work. I was totally wrong; though I yelled and screamed initially, I think he has to be complimented on what he's done."

So what has Matthew Teitelbaum done?

Some would say the 53-year-old has pulled off the impossible. Starting with $63 million from what was then know as the SuperBuild program, a federal-provincial capital funding arrangement, and an unprecedented gift of art (a collection evaluated at upwards of $300 million) and money ($100 million) from the late Kenneth Thomson, Teitelbaum has transformed the gallery top to bottom.

And with it – perhaps – the city. We'll see.

Simply put, the AGO is a different place now, and not just a larger facility with more exhibition space, washrooms and such amenities. For Teitelbaum, its completion marks a start of a process, not a finish. This is not just just another exercise in trophy architecture, he insists, but an attempt to lift the institution to the next level.

The goal, says Teitelbaum, is to unleash the power of art. He's content to let each one of us to determine exactly what that means, but of one thing he's sure: Art can change the world just as dramatically it has the AGO.

Matthew Teitelbaum's relationship with art goes back as far as he can remember. Born in Toronto in 1956, he was the third child and only son of Mashel and Ethel Teitelbaum. He grew up in a warm, noisy and well-connected household in uptown Toronto. The Teitelbaums seemed to know everyone. Artists, politicians and media types dropped by often. Older sister Mara famously babysat University of Toronto historian Ramsay Cook's kids when Pierre Trudeau came to visit.

"I remember one time (former CBC-TV anchorman Knowlton Nash) was at our house for a party," Teitelbaum recalls, "but had to leave early to read the news."

Mashel, who died in 1985, was recognized in Toronto as a brilliant but mercurial artist whose work could be as provocative as his opinions. Fearless, outspoken and afflicted with bipolar disorder, Mashel didn't always make things easy, even for his friends.

For his son, however, Mashel's legacy would reveal itself in unexpected ways.

"I didn't live in a world where my role models were bottom-line thinkers," he says. "I grew up in a house with paintings leaning against the wall ... where things just happened. My father taught me the value of the creative life, and passed on a scepticism of authority. His gift to me was an absolute sense that I belong. But he didn't make a living."

That fell to Ethel Teitelbaum, an immensely capable woman who began as a special political assistant to then-federal finance minister Donald Macdonald and ended up being a member of the old Immigration Appeal Board for 20 years before retiring a decade ago.

"When Matthew was appointed director of the AGO, he told me he wondered if my friends would still think of him as a 12-year-old kid," she jokes.

But as she quickly makes clear, even if her friends hadn't realized that Matthew had grown up, she did. More than that, she says, his career path could be discerned from an early age.

"In retrospect it seems obvious he was moving along certain paths," she explains. "He had a clear idea of where he was headed. I wasn't at all surprised when he got to the gallery; it seemed quite natural."

But to understand what becoming director of the AGO meant to him, we must go back to the summer of 1981. That was the year Teitelbaum was hired to give gallery tours at the AGO. He hadn't studied art, and wasn't sure he wanted to. But this was a chance to get to know the collection and learn to talk about art. Getting the job wasn't especially remarkable, except that at the same time, Matthew's father was on the other side of the front door protesting.

Predictably, his one-man demonstration attracted attention, much of it of the let's-laugh-at-the-antics-of-the-eccentric-artist variety. Mashel had become a local character, the kind of colourful figure whose exaggerated behaviour kept many from seeing what lay beneath.

In fact, Mashel's quarrel with the institution was over its indifference to living Canadian artists. It was a theme that would be picked up to the point where, in its post-Gehry configuration, the AGO displays more contemporary art than ever, both from here and abroad.

"One of the things that really moves me is how Matthew has made artists feel that the AGO is their place," says Ethel. "When Mashel demonstrated at the damn place, artists didn't feel they belonged there. There was tremendous anger and resentment against the AGO.

"One of Matthew's prime motivations is to open the gallery to artists and let them know they belong there. I think this comes from his direct feelings about his father. For me, this is first and foremost his major accomplishment."

Respected Toronto artist and teacher Joanne Tod, whose large canvas Barekallah is featured in one of the AGO's new contemporary art galleries, also likes what she sees. Her involvement with the place goes back more than a decade to the days of Glenn Lowry, who served as director from 1990 to '94.

"Matthew has a good bedside manner," Tod says laughing. "He doesn't loose his cool. I've never seen him be anything but pleasant. And he always remembers people's names. But he's tough on the inside, and sensitive to local issues."

It's easy to forget that the two directors who immediately preceded Teitelbaum, first Lowry, and then Max Anderson, were American.

"I think it makes big difference," Tod continues. "A Canadian can take pride in homegrown success. The AGO is a fabulous institution, and that has a lot to do with Matthew's commitment."

William Thorsell, now director of the Royal Ontario Museum and driving force behind that other institutional make-over, Daniel Libeskind's Crystal, agrees with Tod on the importance of being Canadian.

"When Matthew was appointed as head of the AGO," he remembers, "I was still at The Globe and Mail. I sent him a note to say how pleased I was that a Canadian was taking over; the AGO has a very important role in the development of the arts in Canada."

By contrast, architect Frank Gehry – himself Canadian-born – insists Teitelbaum's citizenship has nothing to do with his success. That, he says, lies in his ability to deal with the Kenneth Thomsons of the world, rich and powerful individuals who have so much invested – emotionally and economically – in their collections.

"Some pretty good museum directors have not been able to connect with collectors," Gehry points out. "These people are giving a piece of their lives to the museum; it isn't easy for them. Not because they're good or bad, but because they're human.

"It's a very delicate process. These people have spent their lives building a collection. Their identities are all wrapped in the collection, and they want to maintain their identity intact. I went through it with (U.S. industrialist and art collector) Norton Simon, and traipsed with him through a number of institutions. In the end, he decided to build his own museum. That flew in the face of Ken Thomson's modesty. But if you look at what Ken did, it's obvious it was an extraordinary gift.

"Matthew's been a good steward and taken advantage of the opportunities brought to him by the Thomsons. He worked with the opportunity, not against it. He let me have space with the Thomsons, and didn't interfere with the things they wanted to do.

For the kid who grew up in Toronto, attending Deer Park Public School and Jarvis Collegiate before moving on to Carleton University in Ottawa to study Canadian history, and later The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the city, let alone the AGO, is familiar territory.

Even now, Teitelbaum and his family – wife Susan Cohen, who runs the Garfield Weston Foundation, and sons, Max, 17, and Elijah, 15 – live close by his old uptown neighbourhood.

When he's not being director, he likes to make the rounds of local flea markets and look for antiques.

"I'm a scavenger," he confesses. "I go to the Sunday market. I look for old books and thin ties." Vintage ties, the thinner the better, have been a Teitelbaum trademark for years.

"I try to have a date with my wife every week," he adds, "though I'm not always good at that."

And after that, there's pickup basketball at the nearby park.

After curatorial stints at the London Regional Gallery, the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, Teitelbaum was hired in 1994 by then-AGO-director Glenn Lowry to be chief curator. The two had met years before at a Queen's University conference.

"We got into a ferocious argument," Lowry relates. "But I went back to Toronto afterwards and told my wife, `I just met the guy who should be the next curator at the AGO.' I loved the way his mind worked. He always asked the right questions."

"It wasn't an argument," Teitelbaum retorts, "it was a debate, a discussion about whether we have moved beyond the era of the lone institutional voice and the need for institutions to be accountable for the choices they make.

"When he was director of the AGO, Glenn introduced the notion of public advocacy. You can't create desire out of something that's stuffy and old. The role of the gallery is to build a public; that's what my father lacked the most."

The new building, he says, is a means to that end. He calls it a "platform," and "a link between the idea of the gallery and the idea of the city. Visitor experience is paramount," he says. "We've always maintained that all art is contemporary; it becomes new in your experience of it. Pairings of works can encourage visitors to ask, 'What does this mean to me today?' "

But in the three months since the AGO reopened, the global economy has imploded. Some think the AGO's timing was impeccable; others say it couldn't be worse.

"The current economic conditions give us pause," Teitelbaum concedes. "We're right on the edge of doing something extraordinary and then everything slows down. We have a real shot at getting to the next level. Membership has never been higher; but we need more people. We're hurting. We're in conversations with other institutions in a new way. The international press was positive about the new building. What concerns me is that now the financial climate won't let us get there."

Lowry echoes Teitelbaum's fears: "This is a vicious little recession, if not something much worse," he says. "Every cultural institution is going to suffer and have to figure out how to get through these times. The challenge for Matthew and the AGO is that it happened before the gallery had a chance to get fully up and running."

Despite the doom and gloom, a recent morning found the gallery humming with activity. Everywhere people were arriving, looking, leaving, shopping, eating, talking... The AGO has never seemed busier, or felt more alive. And never has it been more a part of Toronto than it is now. In a city that doesn't always take kindly to change, the remade AGO has been received with rare, if not unique, enthusiasm.

"I think Matthew's father would have felt deep ambivalence that he has become director of an institution he despised," Ethel says. "But he would also have been very, very proud."

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com